The call, from an unknown number, rang on her cellphone at a most unexpected time—while she was riding home from her undergraduate commencement at George Mason University.
It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and Mary Delaney Fox (G’24), still wearing her cap and gown, was enjoying the momentous occasion. She decided to let the call go, but her boyfriend, who was driving, urged her to answer it.
“You’re job hunting. You’re career hunting,” her boyfriend—now her husband—said. “You should pick it up.”
Fox’s father had worked for the U.S. State Department and she had lived all over the world. So, it was natural that Fox, a communications major, would apply for jobs with the federal government. This call, however, was from a woman at a nonprofit, now known as Infinite Legacy, that works with local hospitals and transplant centers in the Washington, D.C., area to facilitate organ, eye, and tissue donation, and educates the public about the importance of registering to be a donor.
She had seen Fox’s resume online.
“Are you aware of the transplant waiting list?” the woman asked. “Are you aware of organ donation?”
Yes, Fox said. Then she told the caller her family’s story.
A Miracle Baby
When Fox’s mother was in her 20s she suffered kidney failure. She was on dialysis for eight years before a kidney became available thanks to a generous organ donor and she received a life-saving transplant at Georgetown University Hospital. A few years later, Mary Delaney Fox was born at that same hospital in a delivery that was riskier than usual because her mother was an organ recipient. Her parents called her a “miracle baby”—a moniker she would carry as an inspiration and challenge.
“Growing up knowing you are a miracle baby and are alive today thanks to someone else’s generosity and kindness changes you,” Fox told Jamie Kralovec, director of mission and ministry for Georgetown’s Capitol Campus. “It absolutely changes the trajectory of your life.”
Not long after that phone call, Fox accepted a job at Infinite Legacy, where she proudly worked for 15 years.
In 2024, Fox graduated from the Master’s in Public Relations & Corporate Communications program and was awarded a Tropaia award for her work in the program as well as the Spirit of Georgetown Award for exemplifying the university’s Jesuit mission and values. Fox was commended for her academic work, which included both excellence in the classroom and research on preventable kidney disease in Spanish-seeking communities. Outside of her coursework, Fox served as co-director of the Georgetown Graduate Student Government's External Relations Committee and worked to promote organ donation education. Fox, who is bilingual, is especially passionate about Spanish-speaking communities, which, like other multicultural communities, have a greater need for organ donation but fewer individuals enrolled as registered donors.
When talking about organ donation, Fox emphasizes the benefits to both the organ recipient and the donor family, whose relative, “in their last act of charity and love were able to give the gift of life.” Infinite Legacy has more than 400 “Donate Life Ambassadors,” people whose lives were saved by organ donation and families whose loved ones’ donations made that gift possible.
A Focus on Service
Giving back is also emphasized in the Public Relations & Corporate Communications program, says Faculty Director Carol Blymire. It goes hand-in-hand with the idea of personal branding, which, contrary to what some might think, is not about creating a slick new persona, but something quite different: helping “students get really clear on what their natural-born talents are, clear on their values, and making sure that the work they’re doing, is in alignment with that.”
The end goal, Blymire says, is not hoarding those talents or employing them for selfish purposes, but using them for the betterment of others—something that Fox and so many other graduates of the program understand.
“We have these gifts. We have this knowledge. But it means nothing till we give it away,” Blymire says. “When you have a student like Mary, who understands that and wants to continue taking what she has and sharing it with others, there’s nothing better for me as a teacher.”
Of course, developing these gifts and acquiring that knowledge takes hard work, something Fox knows a lot about after juggling graduate school, a job dealing with critical life-and-death issues, and a busy family life with her husband and two children. To other Georgetown graduate students with similarly hectic lives—and there are many—she offers this advice:
“When life gets hard, you are stronger than you think. There is hope, even when all hope feels lost. Anything is possible when you have the courage to follow your dreams. Keep going.”
Since graduating, Fox has been selected as the networking chair for the Georgetown Alumni Club of D.C.
To learn more about organ donation or sign up as a registered donor, please visit www.registerme.org.
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